Ocean salinity could worsen India’s monsoon and amplify global climate disruptions, according to a recent study that highlights a previously underappreciated driver of weather extremes. A new study out of Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment points to ocean salinity as a big player in shaping weather extremes, especially for India’s monsoon, and researchers dug through 65 years of data and found that changes in ocean salt can crank up the intensity of El Niño by about 20% and double the odds of extreme climate events worldwide.

El Niño’s Role in the Weakening of the Monsoon

El Niño is a climate phenomenon that is characterized by warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific, which disturbs the global wind and rainfall patterns. As a result, the region of South Asia gets less rainfall due to the reduced southwest monsoon, which brings much-needed rainfall to India.

The 2023 El Niño was one of the most severe instances of this phenomenon and resulted in the driest August since 2018, which further resulted in a shortage of food grains and an increase in food inflation.

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The Influence of Ocean Salinity on Climate

Experts agree that the ocean is not uniform in nature and contains variable concentrations of dissolved salts, which vary due to differences in the amount of rainfall, the environmental factors of evaporation, and ocean current conditions, with these variables contributing to overall ocean circulation. Collectively, these variations of salinity and circulation (ocean vs. atmospheric) affect climate-related patterns such as El Niño.

These researchers concluded that during spring months, as the separation of saltier and fresher water occurs at the equator around the western Pacific with the freshly formed water being located nearer to the equatorial plane and the saltier water farther away, there is an increased likelihood for warm surface waters to move eastward; thereby leading to a principal mechanism for triggering El Niño.

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Improving the Prediction and Forecasting

The ocean’s salinity has traditionally not been considered an important variable in El Niño predictions, with climate models focusing on temperature and on developing climate states associated with changes in atmospheric temperature, wind, and pressure systems. The addition of salinity as a predictive variable would likely improve the ability to predict potential El Niño events and provide countries like India with additional time to prepare for weak monsoons and extended periods of drought expected in strong El Niño years.

Improved monitoring of ocean variables is essential to assess the actual salinity of ocean waters in the context of overall climate resilience planning. Ocean salinity could worsen India’s monsoon and is an important predictive variable for future climate models.

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